Lately I've been talking to the giant live oak in my backyard.
I like to let it know I'm here.
(This is what happens when I don't get out much, thanks to the Delta Surge)
So I wonder if this majestic tree has anything to say to me.
I have it on good authority (Suzanne Simard in Finding the Mother Tree and Richard Powers in The Overstory)
that trees communicate with each other, but not necessarily with me.
I wish, like Walt
Whitman, who "saw in Louisiana a live oak growing," I could sense the
tree expressing leaves of joyous green.
I can appreciate the beauty, and certainly the shade, but when I
beg the tree not to shake off any large limbs,
crashing them through my
roof, I never get an answer. No reassurances.
I had the tree nicely
trimmed a few years ago, and it expressed its appreciation by growing more
skyward than roofward.
Just before Hurricane Delta hit last year, I went out and gave the tree a few friendly pats (a hug was impossible),
and I said I know you can handle it, I know you have no shallow roots, you're sturdy and can withstand the big winds,
because you are big, very big and beautiful and I love you
but I also fear you, you sometimes resemble, in my darker moods,
a Kraken that got its fearsome head stuck in the ground, your limbs his arms and tentacles waving in the air,
waiting to crush my house.
I take it back! It's the season of big storms and a monster is heading our way even as I write.
You're not a monster,
you're a magnificent creature, provider of precious oxygen,
and home for squirrels and raccoons, who seem to live in peace because there's plenty of room up there,
So I pray to you, when the next hurricane comes, feel free to roar with
the wind and shake off some twigs, some soft rotting limbs,
but spare our house, and us too, thank you very much, Louisiana live oak growing.